The secondary roles are nearly tertiary on this edit, however sharply incised. Taking part in each Stephen Dedalus, caught instructing historical past to uninterested boys, and Bloom’s sharp-tongued cat, Christopher-Rashee Stevenson embodies their shocking commonality. “Stately, plump” Buck Mulligan is, in Shepherd’s sketch, a well-known, odious blowhard; as Molly’s lover Blazes Boylan, loping lasciviously with the loosely strung limbs of a marionette, he’s an particularly terrible and marvelous roué. Solely the narration, although superbly spoken — usually by Stephanie Weeks, Dee Beasnael and Kate Benson once they aren’t shape-shifting into varied Dubliners — feels as but underdramatized.
The slack is taken up by the bodily manufacturing, which pushes Elevator Restore Service’s minimalistic maximalism, made well-known 14 years in the past by its eight-hour “Gatz,” to even additional extremes. Scenes are effectively set with only a prop or two: Dedalus’s noxious classroom is recommended by a fleet of paper airplanes. The lighting (by Marika Kent) and sound (by Ben Jalosa Williams) perform as a sort of refrain, amplifying the small world the characters dwell in, and even the poker-faced set (by the design collective dots) finally reveals its hand.
However it could be Enver Chakartash’s costumes that greatest categorical the corporate’s ethos — and, in doing so, Joyce’s. At first, when the actors seem at that bland convention desk, and we see them solely from the photo voltaic plexus up, they appear to be carrying unremarkable fits, evoking probity. However with time, as they rise and transfer, the picture transforms. Dedalus is carrying shorts, Bloom a full skirt with complicated pleats. Molly’s jacket components to disclose a lacy camisole, and the big purple flower on her lapel metastasizes right into a wreath of blooms in her hair.
That is what this “Ulysses” exhibits us: that nevertheless standard the face we current to the world, decrease down or an inch beneath we’re all hungry our bodies. Sucklers, defecators, perverts, we wander misplaced inside our grossest wants and float on our effusions — not on Homer’s wine-dark sea however Joyce’s “snotgreen” one. Hilariously, we’re heroes simply the identical.
Ulysses
Via July 14 on the Fisher Middle for the Performing Arts, Bard School, Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y.; fishercenter.bard.edu. Operating time: 2 hours 40 minutes.
